Jihadists fighting to take the strategic Syrian border town of Kobane advanced Wednesday despite intensified U.S.-led air strikes.
Kobane has become a symbol of resistance against the Islamic State group, which proclaimed an Islamic "caliphate" across swathes of Iraq and Syria, carrying out beheadings and other atrocities.

The family of an American citizen on hunger strike in an Egyptian jail for some 250 days are appealing to the U.S. government to press Cairo to let him go fearing his life is at risk.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called Saudi Arabia’s foreign affairs minister Tuesday and "clarified" his diplomatic gaffe in which he suggested Saudi Arabia and other key allies had financed the Islamic State group, the White House said.

Canadian lawmakers voted Tuesday to join the international coalition launching air strikes on the Islamic State group in Iraq.

An infidel horde flying 80 banners meets a Muslim army at the Syrian town of Dabiq in an apocalyptic battle. The Muslims are decimated but ultimately prevail, ushering in the end of days.

The United States said Tuesday it was "horrific" watching in real time the battle for the Syrian border town of Kobane, insisting it did not want to see the city fall to Islamic militants.
The blitz on Kobane by the Islamic State group follows a three-week siege that sent 190,000 refugees streaming into Turkey -- and despite U.S.-led coalition air attacks, the town appears on the verge of falling.

Algerian soldiers shot dead three armed Islamists southeast of the capital on Tuesday, a defense ministry statement said.
It said special forces killed the three militants in the Biskra region, 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Algiers, and that guns and ammunition were recovered.

The international community should immediately act to defend the besieged Syrian town of Kobane from the jihadist Islamic State group, the UN's envoy to Syria said on Tuesday.
"The world, all of us, will regret deeply if ISIS (Islamic State) is able to take over a city which has defended itself with courage but is close to not being able to do so. We need to act now," Staffan de Mistura said in a statement.

Dozens of Kurdish demonstrators burst into the European parliament in Brussels on Tuesday to protest the Islamic State group's attack on the town of Kobane on Syria's border with Turkey.
Brandishing Kurdish flags and effigies of their jailed separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan, the men and women broke through a police barrier to enter the hall of the building.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told police chiefs and the Shin Bet security service Tuesday to get tough on violent Palestinian protest in Jerusalem, which has spiked in recent months.
"The prime minister instructed that forces be strengthened in areas of conflict and that they should act aggressively against rioters," his office said after a special meeting of the security chiefs, also attended by Jerusalem's mayor and government legal advisers.
